Game On in New Mexico, MMO Angle Dropped? (Blog)

Category: Gamer News | Posted by:DaisyMayArticle Date: September 2, 2007 | Publication: Gamerflicks | Author: StaffPublication/Article Link:Gamerflicks
Game On in New Mexico, MMO Angle Dropped?
Posted by Gamerflicks on Sunday, September 02, 2007 at 02:12 AM
Details have surfaced about where and when Gerard Butler’s new movie Game will start filming. According to an announcement issued by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson last week, the sci-fi/action film will begin shooting on November 5 with scenes to be filmed in and around Albuquerque. Production will continue for 55 days and is scheduled to wrap on February 5, 2008. According to the Governor about 180 people will be employed on the Game production for the duration of the movie’s shoot in New Mexico, with interior sets being constructed at the Albuquerque Studios.

Gamerflicks has also uncovered new information about the film’s premise that strongly suggests the video game storyline has been discarded. Back when the movie was first announced in May we learned that Butler’s character would be a future gamer called Kable, the best-known player in a massive-multiplayer online (MMO) game called “Slayers”. In addition to the digital game setting “Slayers” also incorporates a real world aspect as the gamers uses real people whose minds have been embedded with a means to control their actions. These citizens can be used as fodder and pawns for the players to control, making game moves that can result in widespread death and violence in the real world. Eventually Kable decides to rebel against the game’s makers and bring the system down.

In the new premise for Game Butler’s character’s name has been changed to John Tillman, and whereas Kable was a willing participant in playing “Slayers”, Tillman is now described as a former military man that was framed and handed a sentence of life in prison. The only hope that Tillman has to regain his freedom is to win the Game, a weekly TV show broadcast in 2018 that matches prisoners against each other in deadly combat. With Tillman’s past military training and good physical condition he becomes a star player in the Game, rising through the ranks and earning the attention of millions of fans. Even as Tillman plays the Game in the hopes that he can win his freedom what he doesn’t know is that there are forces behind the Game’s curtain that don’t want to see him ever get out alive. There no longer appears to be any mentions of a MMO setting or mind controlled citizens that act as game pieces for the game’s players. In fact Game‘s new synopsis shares more in common with the 1987 film The Running Man or reality television shows like Survivor than any MMO video game scenario.

Further supporting the notion that the MMO theme from Game has been entirely written out comes from the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. In a story published by that paper last Friday Brian Taylor, one of the two writers of Game, told the newspaper that “It’s a lot about control. It’s set five minutes in the future about a guy who’s wrongly in prison and needs to get back to his wife and daughters.” No mention of the massive online multiplayer setting was mentioned in the Journal article.